The Coen brothers are shooting their next film in Minnesota. This could be my big break. After all, every Coen brothers movie features at least one funny-looking guy. Steve Buscemi. John Turturro. I’m way funnier-looking than either of them. And I’m not picky about the size of my role. I can play Onlooker #2 or Quirky Co-Worker with equal gusto. I’ll even change my name to something less ethnic. Mark Singer. Mark Samuels. Whatever. Just give me a chance!
It’s spring time and young gimps’ thoughts turn to thoughts of love (or lust). That’s the impression one gets from the latest disability-themed edition of Dan Savage’s sex column. Dan’s responses to the plights of the disabled and the horned-up are reasonable and measured. He makes a good point about the fact that gimp sexuality runs the gamut from plain vanilla to the exotic. I once knew a guy with Duchenne’s who wanted nothing more than to meet a girl who would tie him up. That seemed redundant to me, but different strokes and all that.
It’s good to know I’m not the only one who, in a moment of loneliness and self-loathing, wrote Savage with my own sob story about how girls didn’t like me, how my gimpness was going to keep me single and frustrated for the rest of my life, and so on. My insecurities are still with me and they probably always will be. But they are tempered with the knowledge that I can be my own worst critic. And I’ve slowly learned to trust other people to see all the good things in me that too often remain hidden to my own eyes.
My first encounter with Midsummer Night’s Dream came in a high school English class. We read much of the text aloud in class and the teacher assigned Bottom’s lines to me. I remember choking down laughter as I played my part and it dawned on me that Shakespeare was pretty hilarious for a dead guy.
The Guthrie’s production of Dream is a playful and ambitious updating of the original text. While the action still ostensibly unfolds in classical Athens and the characters still speak mostly in Elizabethan English, I don’t think think Shakespeare imagined a notebook computer as one of the stage props. I also don’t think he imagined his characters breaking out into elaborate song and dance numbers. The decision to include undeniably pop-sounding musical interludes is a bold one, but my friend and I both thought they slowed the pace, at least in the second half. To paraphrase my friend, it got a little too Broadway towards the end.
Still, it’s impossible not to give in to the play’s intrinsic charm and magic. All the actors are wonderful (but Oberon and Bottom are particularly superb). The set design and costumes bring an otherworldly splendor to the proceedings. When it was over, I was a little sad; the kind of sadness you get after waking from a good dream.
Some people are still catching on to the fact that geek culture and geek values have infiltrated the mainstream of American society. Take David Brooks’ editorial in the Times entitled “The Alpha Geeks“. Brooks’ late-to-the-party enthusiasm for geek cool is kind of cute, but it makes you wonder how astute the first Times‘ op-ed writers really are. I do like this sentence, though:
The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds.
Hear that? I’m both supple and well-modulated. If that isn’t the definition of “sexy”, I don’t know what is.
As long as we’re talking about geek awesomeness, check out the video for Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” and see how many YouTube references you can identify.
I’ve noticed that my site traffic has crept slightly upwards in recent weeks. I’m at a loss to explain the cause. The content is as mediocre as it’s ever been. Is there nothing else good on the internets?
I’m listening to some of the first MP3s I ever downloaded onto my computer, back in the heyday of Napster. I close my eyes and it’s 1998 all over again. The first song I ever downloaded: “Don’t Dream” by Crowded House. I’m too embarrassed to list all of the other Eighties pop I eventually accumulated.
To get my groove back, I remind myself that this feeling is only temporary. Soon there will be another drink with a friend, another phone call with my brother, another lunch with a work colleague, another embrace, another kiss. It might even come from someone in this crowded room.
Modifications to our existing currency will come with some initial expense, but those costs are minimal in the long run. Canada pulled off a similar feat in 1995 with little fanfare. Surely we’re not going to let Canada get away with showing us up.
I sometimes daydream about being able to pull up documents on an inlaid display of my eyeglasses using a subvocal speech interface. Yes, most of my daydreams are this boring.